Posted by: Rob Hof on February 24, 2006

No doubt eyeing the boom in online advertising, eBay is now trying out an ad format it has used in its real estate listings on a new swath of products, from travel to jewelry to cemetery plots (cemetery plots?). As eBay explains:

Ad Format brings interested buyers and sellers together, without enabling the actual bidding or buying process through the site. This format has been used in our Real Estate category for several years, where buying or selling is usually a major transaction. Using Ad
Format, eBay has brought interested buyers and sellers together on the eBay marketplace for houses and real estate properties, items that require more time and communication before a deal is closed than most other types of items sold today.

There’s the usual carping by eBay sellers about the service, which costs $9.95 for a 30-day listing—though one potentially valid concern is that buyers could get confused by all the buying choices. (And the click-to-call ads that newly acquired Skype is supposed to enable are still to come.) But it’s clear the folks at eBay aren’t idly watching the slowdown in its core auction business.

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Bloomberg Businessweek writers Peter Burrows, Cliff Edwards, Olga Kharif, Aaron Ricadela, and Douglas MacMillan, dig behind the headlines to analyze what’s really happening throughout the world of technology. Tech Beat covers everything from tech bellwethers like Apple, Google, and Intel and emerging new leaders such as Facebook to new technologies, trends, and controversies.